Former open-heart surgery patients or their families are suing the hospital for medical malpractice, claiming it failed to take proper steps to prevent the infections. Sixteen patients died as a result, lawyer Calvin Warriner said.

Sixty patients or their families filed lawsuits Friday, along with 19 similar claims filed earlier this year.

Warriner said 10 more suits are expected, bringing the total to 89 malpractice cases for surgeries dating from 1995 until last June.

Each of the lawsuits seeks damages exceeding $15,000, but if the lawsuits are successful they could cost the hospital substantially more than that minimum.

"As far as I know, no case has ever been filed in the state of Florida representing a group as large as this against one hospital, one service, for causing or giving patients infections that they should not have gotten," Warriner said.

The hospital's Chief Executive Clint Matthews said in a statement that he stood by the hospital's reputation for quality cardiac care. More than 6,500 open-heart surgeries have been performed at its facility since 1995, he said.

"More physicians have trusted their patients to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center than any other cardiac provider in South Florida," the statement read.

In 2000, the hospital received a rating of 91 out of 100 from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, which inspects the hospital, although infection control was one of five areas recommended for improvement.

Pat Glynn, spokesman for the state Agency for Health Care Administration, said its investigators weren't aware of any recent "major issues related to infection control" at the medical center.

The suits claim the hospital failed to control infections, then didn't properly review the cases or take steps to remedy the problem, as required by law.

"It was right under their noses, they had to know," Warriner said.

He said he didn't know the cause of the infections, but said possibly unsterile operating rooms, lack of hand washing or inadequate housekeeping were to blame.

Patients reported feces on the floor of the intensive care unit, trash left in hallways for hours and floors being mopped using dirty water and no disinfectant.

In other cases, family members said nurses failed to change soiled sheets and left a patient's dirty bandages in a sink for several days, Warrimer said.

The Palm Beach Gardens hospital was purchased by California-based Tenet in 1995, after which there was a sharp increase in the number of heart surgery infections because of cost-cutting measures, the suits alleged.

Nurses, administrators and housekeepers were cut, along with staff and funding for the hospital's infection control program, according to the lawsuits.

In the days and weeks following surgery, the patients complained of fevers, chills and leaky surgery wounds. They returned to the medical center, where most underwent at least one reconstructive surgery to remove part of their infected sternum, or chest bone, the suits say.

"I would like to see that hospital shut down and cleaned up so other people don't have to go through what we've all had to go through," said patient Lorraine Lydon, 57.

She underwent 17 operations because of complications she developed from the infection, including scarring of her lungs. Her sternum, collarbone and a few ribs were removed.

She is confined to a wheelchair and needs an oxygen tank to help her breathe.

Lydon of Loxahatchee said she can no longer work, drive, play with her eight grandchildren or lead the active lifestyle she had before surgery in September 2000 to remove blockage in her heart.

"I feel like I was a 50-year-old woman and now I'm in a 90-year-old woman's body," she said.

Herb Jarrett, 56, of Stuart, had two metal plates inserted in his chest with eight screws to hold his sternum together.

He said he was told by hospital officials that its heart-surgery infection rate was equal to the national average.

Warrimer believes the infection rate is at least five times higher than the standard, but said he hasn't yet obtained the hospital's medical record to support that claim.

Most of the patients were infected by two drug-resistant strains of staph bacteria that are present in hospitals, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus and epidermis, or MRSA and MRSE.

The strains are treated with a strong intravenous antibiotic that can be toxic.